Phantom Breaker: Omnia

When it was released back in 2013, Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds helped to usher in a new generation of stylish beat 'em ups that honored the classics from the 16-bit era while simultaneously adding something new and exciting to the formula. What you may not have realized at the time was that Battle Grounds was actually a spin-off of a one-on-one fighting game released on the Xbox 360 that never made its way outside of Japan. Now, more than a decade after it first hit consoles, Phantom Breaker has finally come West with a comprehensive new iteration named Omnia. It's a game that not only packages all of the characters, stories and endings from the past versions, but also adds extra combatants, a new fighting style and English voice acting. That's cool for collectors, but does this aging fighting game still hold up in 2022? That's what I want to find out in this review of Phantom Breaker: Omnia.

If you've never played Phantom Breaker before, then here's what you need to know: A mysterious figure named Phantom has lured a bunch of anime characters to compete in a grueling tournament by promising to grant the winner's wish. These fights take place all over Tokyo, with each duelist forced to use weapons known as Fu-mension Artifacts, or F.A.s for short. But as the colorful cast of characters dig deeper, they begin to sense that something is up with the Phantom and maybe things are not what they appear.

This sets up a fun fighting game with more than twenty combatants, all of which are armed with powerful weapons and desperately want their wish to be granted. What kind of weapons? Well, let me introduce you to Ende, who uses a giant floating metal hand to pummel the competition. There's also Cocoa, who fights using her demonic hand; Itsuki, an arbiter of justice that lays down the law with a battle hammer; M, a girl with no name or past who uses a mace created from scrap metal; and Fin, who uses a futuristic, multi-purpose laser gun named JJ Apple.

If you can't tell from those descriptions, everybody is a larger-than-life character in Phantom Break: Omnia. They are eccentric anime personalities with unique stories, wishes and weapons. It's the kind of thing that could have been overwhelming to a new player, yet this particular one-on-one fighter has a secret weapon -- every single person in this game is fun to control.

The reason is simple: By design, Phantom Breaker is an incredibly accessible fighting game that is easy to get into. We're given a weak, medium and hard attacks, as well as a special move button that will unleash missiles, fireballs and fierce uppercuts. Your moves will change depending on the direction and button you're pressing at the time, which means that you won't need to learn a lot of overly complicated button combinations and directional inputs. All you need to do is remember the difference between holding left, right or down and pressing the special move button.

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While hardcore fans may scoff at the simplicity of the gameplay, what it does is immediately gets the player into the action. I never felt like I had to spend two or three rounds hunting for special moves and combos, because the basics remain the same no matter which character you choose. And that's a good thing, because, right out of the gate, Phantom Breakers: Omnia is a fast-paced fighter that doesn't give you a lot of time to think. The relatively simplistic gameplay fits perfectly in a speedy game like this.

And because the twenty-two characters are so wildly different, I never ran into the problem where the easy controls made everything feel too similar or repetitive. The fights are action-packed, with combos and projectiles flying all over the place. There's also an overdrive meter you can power-up that will increase your speed, power and moves. What's more, you can customize your character with three different fighting styles: Quick, which specializes in combos; Hard, which is all about single-hit attacks; and the new Omnia style, which enhances the character's specs at the expense of complex mechanics.

Beyond having more than twenty beautifully animated fighters, this package also includes a lot of the content found in the previous Phantom Breaker games. This includes all of the stories found in the original game, as well as those from the updated Extra version from 2013. With so many different characters, it's going to take you quite a while to go through the entire story. One thing I like is that some of the characters have individual challenges baked into their stories, requiring you to play in specific ways to past the test. This means landing a multi-hit combo, parrying a number of attacks, breaking a special move and so on so forth. Other characters have a more traditional story mode, where you watch lengthy cinemas that flesh out this world and the people drawn to the tournament. The writing isn't always great and some of the dialog overstays its welcome, but I appreciate the effort and the added touch of including English voice acting.

Phantom Breaker: Omnia also comes with most of the other modes you would expect from a modern fighting game, including a score attack, endless battle, arcade mode, time attack and a number of versus mode options. The good news is that the game also offers online multiplayer, with both ranked and player matches. Unfortunately, the bad news is that Phantom Breaker is not using rollback netcode, which may impact performance. Thankfully, I didn't run into too many difficulties when playing online, but your mileage may vary.

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Another disappointment is the training mode. Actually, it's not the mode that is the problem, but rather the way the game introduces its unique gameplay mechanics. You would think that you could learn the basics, combos and special moves right there in the training mode, but you can't. All of that information is tucked away in the instruction manual, which the game is nice enough to include in a completely separate part of the menu. This is not one of those games where you can just pause the game to look at the character moves, something that is pretty much standard in this genre these days. It would have been helpful to merge that information into one mode that actually taught you how to play.

Despite being more than a decade old, Phantom Breaker still looks great. Sure, it's not as flashy as last year's Guilty Gear Strive, but it also doesn't feel eleven years old. I love the look of the anime characters, both in detail and how they are animated. The 2D graphics don't have any rough edges and fit in perfectly with the 3D elements found in the backgrounds. Speaking of which, I love the use of Tokyo as a setting. We end up fighting in a lot of everyday spots, like a train station, outside a computer store, inside a school, next to a bunch of government buildings, the hospital and whole bunch more landmarks. I also really dig the catchy tunes, and especially appreciate how you can listen to both the original and the remixed soundtrack.

Between the accessible gameplay, large cast of characters and lengthy story mode, there's a lot to like about Phantom Breaker: Omnia. I'm not sure if this will be enough for the hardcore fight fans to abandon Guilty Gear and the rest of the big hitters, but I had a lot of fun with the speedy combat and unique gameplay. This is the kind of fighting game I can whip out that will satisfy both the genre veterans and the newcomers. That's rare for this type of game, and it's just one of the many reasons why I have no problem recommending Phantom Breaker: Omnia.